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Chapter 1
“The Wretched Spirit of Monopoly”
Historically, monopoly has, with limited exceptions, been
seen by economists as a bane of markets, one of the more prominent forms of
so-called market failure. Across time, economists have equated the “evils” of
monopoly with theft and taxation, given that monopoly can impair an economy’s vigor just as theft and taxation can. Unfortunately, countries have, either
all too willingly, with malice or political intention, created and nurtured
monopolies, or else inadvertently, from ignorance of monopolies’ economic
consequences, allowed them to arise and persist.1
In contemporary economics, monopoly is treated as a source of “inef‹ciency,” or “deadweight loss.” That is, monopoly forces a misallocation of
resources, with too few resources being used in the monopolized industries
and too many resources used to lesser advantage in other competitive markets.2
The chief modern standard of comparison for assessing the welfare loss of
monopoly is “perfect competition,” a hypothetical market structure, developed
mainly for analytical purposes, in which all potential gains from trade are realized—all resources are allocated among alternative uses with “perfection” (by
assumptions of the model).
At the same time, many economists as far back as Adam Smith have
doubted that the economic damage done by monopolies could long endure
without the protective arm of government heeding the monopolies’ political
demands for market protections. The main change in economists’ overall
appraisal of monopoly through history has been the growing formalization of
the monopoly model that shows ever more clearly the economic harm monopolies cause, a point that can be seen with a review of the treatment of monopoly by classical economists (covered in this chapter) and their more contemporary neoclassical counterparts (covered in the following chapters).
In this book, our central goal is to undertake a critical and extensive (but not
exhaustive) reexamination of contemporary monopoly theory, though not with
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in defense of monopoly
an eye toward dispensing with the theory altogether. We would be the ‹rst to
argue that the monopoly model that economists widely employ has many good
uses. However, we suggest that the model has been overused and abused, given
that it has almost everywhere been employed to show that monopoly power—
or the capacity of ‹rms to affect market price and ‹rm pro‹ts (or “monopoly
rents”)—is prima facie evidence of a “market failure,” or a sign of
“inef‹ciency” and consumer “welfare loss,” which amounts to the same thing.
On the contrary, we suggest that there is much wisdom in a widely unappreciated position taken by Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) in his classic 1942
work Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, in which he observed, partly in an
effort to explain why capitalism would not survive, that an economic system is
necessarily an imperfect evolutionary process of “creative destruction,” which
makes it ill-suited for ultimate appraisal by the static analysis of conventional
economic theory.
Since we are dealing with a process whose every element takes considerable
time in revealing its true features and ultimate effects, there is no point in
appraising its performance of that process ex visu of a given point of time;
we must judge its performance over time, as it unfolds through decades or
centuries. A system—any system, economic or other—that at every point of
time fully utilizes its possibilities to the best advantage may yet in the long
run be inferior to a system that does so at no given point in time, because
the latter’s failure to do so may be a condition for the level or speed of longrun performance. (1942, 83; emphasis in the original)
In taking a page from Schumpeter, we suggest that monopoly, or the
prospect of monopoly, is an engine of creative production, which necessarily
undergirds economic progress, in contrast to much ingrained wisdom that suggests that monopoly is a drag on economic progress. Take monopoly, and concomitant monopoly rents, out of a market economy—that is, convert all markets to ones of perfectly ›uid (and perfectly ef‹cient) competition, or some
close approximation, eliminating all prospect of economically signi‹cant
monopoly rents in the process—and the system will likely stagnate. Any shortrun ef‹ciency gains achieved by such a conversion, even if such were possible
without massive disruption in economic relationships, would likely be
swamped by the long-term losses from the absence of what Schumpeter considered the far more potent force of “creative destruction.”
In short, we suggest that market economies need some optimum level of
monopoly presence to achieve maximum growth in consumer welfare over
time. The concept of optimum monopoly, albeit ill-de‹ned, could better
direct policy-level discussions on copyrights, patents, and antitrust than the
In Defense of Monopoly: How Market Power Fosters Creative Production
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“The Wretched Spirit of Monopoly”
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current view that elevates “perfect competition” (or, again, some close approximation) and the intentional destruction of all monopoly vestiges as a societal
goal of the highest order. “The only good monopoly is a dead one” is a quip,
in other words, that contains a mountain of fallacies.
As will be seen, we extend our criticisms of current monopoly theory by
showing that monopoly pricing can increase consumer surplus under speci‹ed
market conditions (e.g., network effects) at the same time that it spawns the socalled deadweight loss (a concept that needs to be discarded in much economic
analysis as irrelevant). Of course, our analysis leads inexorably to the conclusion that market entry barriers can be welfare enhancing, in spite of their giving rise to a deadweight loss, as described in conventional analysis.
We show that even when the conventional monopoly model is taken as the
basis for analysis, the monopoly pro‹ts and deadweight loss of monopoly are
not nearly so large as economists’ blackboard models indicate, simply because
conventional analysis does not recognize that achievement of the monopoly
objective of restricting sales to raise price and pro‹ts is a managerial problem
of major proportions. It is a coordination problem, differing from the coordination problems faced by cartels of independent producers only in degree.
Moreover, conventional analysis in which a fully competitive market is
somehow magically cartelized does not consider an obvious problem, that the
individual producers who are brought under a cartel’s umbrella of market control can switch roles, from being independent entrepreneurs, or principals, to
being employees (or bureaucrats), or rather agents, the net effect of which is to
change dramatically their incentives to produce ef‹ciently. This means that
much monopoly “rent seeking” (or the pursuit of monopoly pro‹ts through
government-backed restrictions) must be revised. If monopoly rents are
reduced by so-called principal-agent problems in managing monopolies, then
less rent seeking must be the consequence, which implies less inef‹ciency than
conventional monopoly rent-seeking theory suggests.
In the conventional analysis of monopoly, consumers would never want to
be subjected to monopoly pricing. They would pay higher prices as well as
transfer a portion of their consumer surplus to the monopoly owners. We suggest this is only the case in static analysis, when the product is a given and when
there is no interplay between the actual, or anticipated, consumption of the
good and future consumer demand for the product over time. Indeed, we suggest that under some realistic market conditions, consumers would actually
want to face the prospects of monopoly pricing at some future point in time, as
such prospects can affect the monopolist’s pricing decisions between now and
when the monopoly rents are actually extracted. This isn’t to say that consumers aren’t worse off from monopoly pricing. On the contrary, they are
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in defense of monopoly
when it occurs, but a producer’s initial pricing policies that lead to the monopoly prices can more than compensate consumers for the costs they incur from
the so-called future monopoly prices.
All of these points, understandably, lead to a need for a revamping of modern antitrust thinking that is heavily guided (and misguided) by the conventional microeconomic theory of monopoly under which so many legal scholars
and judges have mistakenly equated market dominance with monopoly—
monopoly as a problem that requires a government-imposed solution.3
Finally, we point out that the theory of monopoly on the buyer’s side of the
market—monopsony—is as defective as monopoly on the seller’s side. For reasons we will explain, it is hard for us to imagine how a monopsony would ever
be able to emerge in labor (or other input) markets without paying above what
were, before the monopsony emerged, competitive wage rates. Hence, from
the perspective of arguments marshaled in chapter 7 of this book, monopsony
should more correctly be viewed as expanding labor’s employment and income
opportunities, not contracting them. In chapter 8, we expand on our discussion
of problems with monopsony theory with a discussion of how the NCAA, an
acclaimed monopsony of collegiate athletic (mainly football and basketball)
talent, could be actually improving the welfare of those athletes whom other
economic and legal scholars presume are being exploited. If this view is correct
(or to the extent it is), any proposal that would force the NCAA to pay market
wages for college and university athletes would have the exact opposite impact
of the one intended.
To put these points in historical context, we begin in this chapter an examination of the monopoly views of key economists in history, starting with
Adam Smith and going through Schumpeter. This review of monopoly thinking is intended to be indicative only of how economists’ thinking on monopoly
has evolved over time. It is not intended to be exhaustive of all positions taken
by economists on monopoly. In the following chapter, we will present the contemporary monopoly model in some graphical detail with the purpose of laying the foundation for critiques of monopoly theory developed by Donald
Dewey (1959) and John McGee (1971) on which we expand in a variety of ways
in following chapters. In the main, however, our critique follows in the Schumpeterian tradition (Schumpeter 1942).
smith, bentham, and ricardo on the
“evils” of monopoly
The venerable Adam Smith (1723–90), the recognized founder of economics
as a discipline, viewed monopoly not much differently than contemporary
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“The Wretched Spirit of Monopoly”
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economists now do, although, as might be expected, Smith was less exact in the
way he chose to discuss the economic harm done by a monopoly. In his Wealth
of Nations, he used the term monopoly to describe a range of market structures,
with the critical feature being the capacity of a ‹rm or ‹rms within a protected
industry to raise the selling price above the competitive—or “natural”—price.
More speci‹cally, he equated the grant of a monopoly with a trade secret that
allowed the producer to control supply and, hence, price (Smith 1776, bk. 1,
chap. 7).
By controlling supply—or “keeping the market under-stocked, by never
fully supplying the effectual demand”—Smith reasoned that monopolists can
“sell their commodities much above the natural price, and raise their emoluments, whether they consist in wages or pro‹t, greatly above their natural rate”
(1776; bk. 1, chap. 7, ¶ 26). On the one hand, the monopolist’s price “is upon
every occasion the highest which can be squeezed out of buyers, or which, it is
supposed, they will consent to give.” On the other, the “natural” or competitive price “is the lowest which the sellers can commonly afford to take, and at
the same time continue in business” (bk. 1, chap. 7, ¶ 27).
To Smith, as well as to other early economists, the word monopoly was not
exclusively used to characterize a single seller of a good or service protected by
barriers to entry, as is often the case in modern discussions of monopoly.
Rather, monopoly applied more loosely to any ‹rm that was capable of elevating its price above cost and that could generate monopoly rent, or an income
over and above what was required to keep the resources in their current
employment. This meant that Smith used monopoly to describe any ‹rm
capable of restricting sales with the intent of raising its price, but it also applied
to ‹rms that were protected by, say, import restrictions and that, as a consequence, were able to elevate their prices above competitive levels, as well as
expand their sales. (Our discussion of monopoly will follow Smith in this
regard. We will talk about monopolies as being ‹rms that have some control
over price through control over market supply, even though they may not be
the only seller in their market.)
Accordingly, Smith was concerned with the monopoly consequences of
mercantilism, which gave rise to a host of trade restrictions designed (mistakenly) to build the nation’s economic well-being. The British Navigation Act of
1660 speci‹ed that “no merchandise shall be imported into the plantation but
in English vessels, navigated by Englishmen, under the penalty of forfeiture”
(Little 1886, ¶ 3693). Another law prohibited the importation of all European
commodities into the colonies except in British ships manned by Englishmen.
There were other times in which kings used patents and exclusive franchises as
revenue sources. For example, Charles I, circa 1630, issued a patent on soap to
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a “company of soap-makers” on the condition that the soap-makers pay him
£10,000 and £8 per ton of soap they sold (¶ 3689). In the Act of 1672, New
England producers were forbidden to compete with the English on the produce from Southern plantations. Moreover, American ‹rms were forbidden to
manufacture goods that would compete with English goods in foreign markets
(¶ 3699).
Among monopoly’s many vagaries—which caused Smith to summarize
them as the “wretched spirit of monopoly”—Smith cited how the creation of
monopoly by, say, import restrictions oppresses the poor, and, at the same
time, the oppression of the poor invariably gives rise to “the monopoly of the
rich, who, by engrossing the whole trade to themselves, will be able to make
very large pro‹ts” (1776, bk. 1, chap. 9, ¶ 15). He also noted how monopolies
are “a great enemy to good management” because, protected as they are,
monopolists don’t have to work as hard at improving, as a matter of market
self-defense, their management ways in response to “free and universal competition” (1776, bk. 1, chap. 11, ¶ 14).
Moreover, whereas monopolies might well improve the pro‹ts of the protected industry, they necessarily undercut state tax revenue precisely because
aggregate national income is diminished (1776, bk. 4, chap. 7, ¶ 143).4 And
then there is the one ›aw of every monopoly that Smith characterized as
“fatal”: “The high rate of pro‹t seems every where to destroy that parsimony
which in other circumstances is natural to the character of the merchant.
When pro‹ts are high that sober virtue seems to be super›uous and expensive
luxury to suit better the af›uence of his situation” (1776, bk. 4, chap. 7, ¶ 147).
Because the protected “owners of great mercantile capitals” are often political
and commercial leaders of communities and, hence, set examples for others by
how they act, a monopoly can also cause the masses of workers to be less parsimonious than they would be otherwise.
Accumulation is thus prevented in the hands of all those who are naturally
the most disposed to accumulate, and the funds destined for the maintenance of productive labour receive no augmentation from the revenue of
those who ought naturally to augment them the most. The capital of the
country, instead of increasing, gradually dwindles away, and the quantity of
productive labour maintained in it grows every day less and less. (1776, bk.
4, chap. 7, ¶ 147)
Finally, Smith is well known for having written,
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and
diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or
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“The Wretched Spirit of Monopoly”
7
in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such
meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of
the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. (1776,
bk. 1, chap. 10, ¶ 82)
Smith is also well known (and revered) for his emphasizing the value of markets freed of government interferences—aside for a short list of potential interferences, including certain goods, like roads, characterized as “public goods” in
modern literature. What is not so widely appreciated is that Smith argued for
public provision of cross-country roads in part because they would ease the
›ow of trade across local markets and thereby would make cartels more
dif‹cult to maintain.5
Because Smith presumed that privately organized cartels would be short
lived, due to the forces of competition that would arise, his major concern in
the Wealth of Nations was with monopolies that were either directly approved
by the state or those that arose in the domestic economy because of government-imposed restrictions on international trade that gave the protected
domestic ‹rms a degree of monopoly pricing power (a concern we share in
spite of our defense of monopolies that arise from unfettered market forces).
Smith recognized that “country gentlemen and farmers” have a more dif‹cult
time than merchants and manufacturers in colluding against the general public. As a consequence, “they accordingly seem to have been the original inventors of those restraints upon the importation of foreign goods which secure to
them the monopoly of the home-market” (1976, bk. 4, chap. 2, ¶ 21). The
monopoly pro‹ts to be garnered with the trade restrictions are all the “encouragement” domestic ‹rms need to press for the protection, which, in the
process, distorts the allocation of resources, especially the employment of
labor.6
In this regard, Smith seemed to understand economic tenets that, in modern times, form the basis of public choice economics, which uses economic
theory—including monopoly theory—to understand governmental policy
processes. Monopoly, in other words, was an important engine of interest
group politics, or what has come to be called, following the work of twentiethcentury economists Gordon Tullock (1967) and Anne Krueger (1974), rent
seeking, the political search for monopoly pro‹ts from government-imposed
market restrictions or other forms of government-provided largess with the
added pro‹ts being the motivation, or what Smith called “encouragement.”
Ultimately, the problems of monopoly, according to Smith, are com-
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pounded by government being made “subservient to the interest of monopoly”
(1776, bk. 4, chap. 7, ¶ 190), and the restrictive laws, passed at the urging of
monopoly-seeking interest groups, are “written in blood.”7 So what if the
import taxes encouraged smuggling that, in turn, reduced government revenues from what they would have been had a lower import tax been imposed?
Smith understood that tax revenues were not the point of the import restrictions; monopoly privileges were.8
Of course, protected industries would like nothing better than to have their
domestic monopoly extended to markets in foreign countries, Smith mused.
However, any government’s jurisdictional boundaries necessarily limit the geographical reach of any monopoly protection, which is why the protected industries have pressed for export subsidies that can be expected to have the same production and pro‹t effects for the favored domestic ‹rm or industry as the import
restrictions. In Smith’s view, ‹rms that bene‹ted from export subsidies were no
less monopolies than the ‹rms that were favored with import restrictions. Both
sets of favored ‹rms received monopoly rents that were, in some sense, unearned
and that gave rise to the misallocation of resources, as well as to all the other
harms Smith noted that ›owed from the presence of monopoly.9
Contrary to what might be deduced from reading about Smith’s hostility to
market protections in general, he was not totally opposed to all monopolies
under all circumstances. According to Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), Smith
once wrote (in a publication Bentham did not identify),
When a company of merchants undertake at their own risk and expence to
establish a new trade, with some remote and barbarous nation, it may not
be unreasonable to incorporate them into a joint-stock company, and to
grant them, in case of their success, a monopoly of the trade for a certain
number of years. It is the easiest and most natural way, in which the state
can recompense them, for hazarding a dangerous and expensive experiment, of which the public is afterwards to reap the bene‹t. A temporary
monopoly of this kind may be vindicated, upon the same principles, upon
which a like monopoly of a new machine is granted to its inventor, and that
of a new book to its author. (Bentham 1787, Letter 13, ¶ 38)
Bentham scolded Smith for being inconsistent, given that Smith had in
other forums denounced all other monopolies. Bentham added, “Private
respect must not stop me from embracing this occasion of giving a warning,
which is so much needed by mankind. If so original and independent a spirit [as
Adam Smith] has not been always able to save itself from being drawn aside by
the fascination of sounds, into the paths of vulgar prejudice, how strict a watch
ought not men of common mould to set over their judgments, to save them-
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selves from being led astray by similar delusions?” (¶ 39). Bentham suggested
that Smith could use his logic for his monopoly exception to support usury
laws, which Smith, Bentham noted, had opposed (¶ 44).
David Ricardo (1772–1823) added to Smith’s view of monopoly in only
marginal ways. In his Principles of Political Economy, Ricardo noted, like Smith,
that the monopoly price “is at the very highest price at which the consumers
are willing to purchase it,” but this monopoly price could change from time
period to time period and product to product. However, that price, according
to Ricardo, “is nowhere regulated by the cost of production” (1817, chap. 17,
¶ 8). Ricardo’s main concern was elaborating on an argument pushed by
Smith, Thomas Robert Malthus (1776–1834),10 and others, that private property in land was a source of monopoly, that the price of land is necessarily a
monopoly price, and that the prices of crops—barley or wheat, for example—
produced on the land contain monopoly rent that, if taxed away, would fall
totally on the landlord, or so argued Ricardo: “If all rent were relinquished by
landlords, I am of opinion, that the commodities produced on the land would
be no cheaper, because there is always a portion of the same commodities produced on land, for which no rent is or can be paid, as the surplus produce is
only suf‹cient to pay the pro‹ts of stock” (1817, chap. 20, ¶ 12).
Ricardo corrected Smith, and others who adopted Smith’s position on trade
restrictions as a source of monopoly rents, in one substantial way. He stressed
that trade restrictions do not afford domestic producers the power to charge
monopoly prices and to garner monopoly rents as Smith had maintained. This
is because such restrictions do not cut out domestic competition, which could be
intense. The “real evil” from such restrictions, Ricardo argued incisively, is not
that the restrictions enable the supposed “monopolies” to charge more than the
competitive price, but that the restrictions actually raise the “natural price”
(meaning competitive, cost-based price) because they increase market
inef‹ciency: “By increasing the cost of production, a portion of the labour of the
country is less productively employed” (1817, n. 54).11 Ricardo seemed to
understand a point often overlooked in even modern treatments of monopoly,
namely, that monopoly rents can be capitalized in the market value of tradable
monopoly, rent-producing assets (e.g., land or franchise), the effect of which can
be to hike implicit opportunity costs and to drop pro‹ts net of the value of tradable asset prices, returning rates of return on investments to competitive levels.
bastiat and marx on monopoly as “plunder”
French economist Frédéric Bastiat (1801–50) is renowned for his incisive satirical opposition to import restrictions, as in his “petition” to the French Cham-
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in defense of monopoly
ber of Deputies on behalf of his country’s “Manufacturers of Candles, Tapers,
Lanterns, Candlesticks, Street Lamps, Snuffers, and Extinguishers, and from
the Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and Generally of Everything
Connected with Lighting.” In his petition, he urged his fellow deputies to pass
laws that would require people to block out the sun during the entire day for
no higher purpose than to increase the demand for candles and everything else
his supposed clients produced. Such laws would have essentially the same
effects as all other laws designed to thwart the free ›ow of trade founded on
cost advantages.12
Obviously, Bastiat had no more respect for monopolies, especially government-created ones, than did Smith and Ricardo. We will consider in some
detail Bastiat’s views on monopoly in chapter 10 (when we consider how writers have equated, wrongly, property rights with monopoly privileges). Here we
can note that in various publications, Bastiat placed monopoly among a changing list of “evils of society,” along with war, slavery, unethical practices, theocracy, colonialism, impostures, inequitable taxation and excesses of government, frauds of every kind, and privilege (1850, chap. 1, ¶ 32; chap. 8, ¶ 9;
1845, ser. 2, chap. 2, ¶ 12). Bastiat saw government-sanctioned “plunder” as a
common denominator of his “evils”: “Plunder not only redistributes wealth; it
always, at the same time, destroys a part of it. War annihilates many values. Slavery paralyzes many capabilities. Theocracy diverts many energies toward
childish or injurious ends. Monopoly too transfers wealth from one pocket to
another, but much of it is lost in the process” (1845, ser. 2, chap. 1, ¶ 21).
When Bastiat wrote about monopoly, he was most concerned about the
then widely expressed contentions that (1) private property gave the owners
monopoly power and (2) “Liberty begets monopoly,” along with “Oppression
is born of freedom” (1850, chap. 1, ¶ 87). With regard to the latter, what he
called a “socialistic pretext,” Bastiat scoffed that the argument is “fatal” for
human history because the claim implied that for people “to learn to choose is
to learn to commit suicide” and then there would be no satisfactory governmental means of correction, given that government would have to call upon
human beings who are, by the nature of the claims, fatally ›awed.13 Bastiat
maintained that the “laws of competition” would see to it that there is no “permanent monopoly,” “since the product of their labor, by an inevitable dispensation of Providence, tends to become the common, gratuitous, and consequently equal heritage of all mankind” with the result “in mankind a basic
tendency toward equality” (1850, chap. 16, ¶ 110). By this he seemed to mean
that any temporary market advantage, owing to some unique ability, would
dissolve with the emergence of competition from the spread of the advantage
with duplication.14
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With regard to the claim that private property affords owners monopoly
privileges, Bastiat ‹rst quoted a number of prominent writers of his time,
including Smith, Ricardo, Considerant, and Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832), as
well as lesser known individuals, all of whom maintained that land is productive in and of itself, independent of what owners do to it, and hence gives rise
to unearned returns, treated synonymously with monopoly pro‹ts and monopoly rents. According to pre-Bastiat scholars, when crops are sold, the workers
get paid for the value they add to what is produced, but landowners are paid for
what is rightly the contribution of the land, not the owner.15 No economic
purpose was seen to be served by the payment to property, just as there is no
positive societal economic purpose served by the rent of monopolists who are
able to control market supply. Bastiat points out that any value contributed by
the land, which is truly “gratuitous” (an adjective that seems to be synonymous
with “unearned”) will be competed away: “Land as a means of production, in
so far as it is the work of God, produces utility, and this utility is gratuitous; it
is not within the owner’s power to charge for it. The land, as a means of production, in so far as the landowner has prepared it, worked on it, enclosed it,
drained it, improved it, added other necessary implements to it, produces
value, which represents human services made available, and this is the only thing
he charges for. Either you must recognize the justice of this demand, or you
must reject your own principle of reciprocal services” (1850, chap. 9, ¶ 111;
emphasis in the original). Bastiat continues by arguing that the landowner
receives a return only for the improvements he has made.16
With regard to the claim that scarcity of resources or goods affords their
owners monopoly power, which is destructive of social welfare, Bastiat
acknowledges that nature’s scarcity enables the resource and good owners to
extract higher prices than otherwise. However, he dispenses with the argument
by drawing a distinction between “natural monopoly” (that which emanates
from nature) and “arti‹cial monopoly” (that which is contrived by ‹rms or
government). Bastiat notes that “the favors bestowed by Nature do no harm to
society. At the very most we could say that they bring to light an evil that
already existed and can in no way be imputed to them. It is too bad, perhaps,
that tokay wine is not as plentiful, and therefore not as cheap, as ordinary red
wine. But this is not a social evil; it was imposed on us by Nature,” to which he
adds, “Mankind would be childish indeed if it became upset, or if it rebelled,
because there is only one Jenny Lind, one Clos-Vougeot, or one Regent [talented people of Bastiat’s era]” (1850, fn. 13).
For Bastiat, what should be of major concern is when people impose an
arti‹cial scarcity on themselves through governmental grants of monopoly
privileges, which can only add to social and economic impoverishment, espe-
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in defense of monopoly
cially as monopoly privileges are widely extended to industry groups.17 When
monopoly privileges become widespread, Bastiat saw a form of creeping socialism with ever more monopoly privileges, as well as other forms of government
largesse—“education, employment, credit, assistance, at the people’s expense”—provided to the “masses.” The “masses” understandably justi‹ed their
political press for government bene‹ts by all the other extant governmentbased privileges and largesse. Although Bastiat never used the expression Prisoner’s Dilemma,18 he certainly saw that dilemma at work as the political
process helped one group after another, with the end result being a loss for
(practically) everyone: “But how the people, once they have won their battle,
can imagine that they too can enter as a body into the ranks of the privileged,
create monopolies for themselves and over themselves, extend abuses widely
enough to provide for their livelihood; how they can fail to see that there is
nobody below them to support these injustices, is one of the most amazing
phenomena of this or any age” (1850, chap. 12, ¶ 28).
Karl Marx (1818–83) had much to say, of course, about how capitalism
favored the capitalists over the workers, given that the capitalists got rich by
extracting a “surplus value” from the productive contributions of labor. However, according to Marx, Malthus’s dreadful population theory was much to
blame. People’s sexual proclivities would ensure a supply of labor that would
press worker wages toward, if not exactly to, subsistence levels, except for short
periods of time. Capitalists could take the differential between the market
value of what the workers produced and what they were paid. Marx had little
to say about monopoly per se.19 However, he shared Smith’s and Ricardo’s
complaint that many ‹rms were able to extract more than a competitive surplus value because they were often protected from competition.
Manufacturing was constantly protected in the domestic market by protective tariffs, in colonial markets by monopolies, and in foreign markets, to
the maximum extent possible, by differential tariffs. The processing of
domestically produced materials (wool and linen in England, silk in
France) was favoured, the export of raw materials generated at home was
prohibited (wool in England) and the [processing] of imported materials
was either neglected or suppressed (cotton in England) . . . In general, manufacturing could not dispense with protection, because the slightest change
occurring in other countries can cause it to lose markets and be ruined.
(1845, 162–63)
Elsewhere, Marx chided the political parties in England for not having an adequate explanation for the “pauperism” of the masses. Each of the two dominant
parties, Whigs and Tories, considered the other party the cause, with the
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Whig Party pointing to the “large-scale ownership and the prohibitive legislation against the import of corn,” and the Tory Party claiming that the “entire
evil lies in liberalism, in competition, in a factory system that has been carried
too far,” points that allowed Marx to note that neither party understood that
the source of poverty lies in politics in general and that the solution lies in “the
reform of society” (1844, 100). In this regard, Marx shared with Bastiat a
healthy disrespect for the conduct of politics.
marshall on the “net revenues” of monopoly
Alfred Marshall (1842–1924) is widely recognized for having formalized much
of the economic theory of his time in his textbook, Principles of Economics, ‹rst
published in 1890. In that work, he introduced the concepts of supply and
demand curves, equilibrium, price-elasticity of demand, consumer surplus, and
producer surplus. Moreover, he made full use of marginal analysis (which dates
to the work of Stanley Jevons [1835–82], Leon Walras [1834–1910], and Carl
Menger [1840–1921], the three economists generally credited with explaining
prices with reference to marginal utility and, thus, founding the “marginal revolution”). Marshall explored market adjustments under three periods: the
“market period,” the amount of time in which the amount of a good cannot be
varied; the “short period,” or the amount of time in which labor and other
inputs can be changed but capital cannot; and the “long period,” or the amount
of time in which all resources, capital included, can be varied.20
With respect to monopoly, Marshall accepted the general view that a
monopoly was any ‹rm able to “‹x an arti‹cial monopoly price; that is, a price
determined with little direct reference to cost of production, but chie›y by a
consideration of what the market will bear” (1890, bk. 5, chap. 1, ¶ 17). He
then set about describing in some detail, with the aid of graphs (relegated to
footnotes), how a monopolist, which disregards the interests of society, including consumers, would choose its price-output combination in order to maximize “net revenues,” or monopoly pro‹ts, which he de‹ned to be revenues
minus all explicit and implicit costs, including risk cost, and “normal pro‹ts.”
This means that he de‹ned monopoly pro‹t in much the same way it is de‹ned
in contemporary economics.
Marshall also pointed out that the monopolist’s pro‹t-maximizing price
would be left unaffected by a change in the ‹rm’s ‹xed costs or by a tax applied
solely to “net revenues.”21 Of course, a change in variable costs or a tax applied
to total revenue (or the “amount produced”) or to book pro‹t (not “net revenue”) would cause the monopolist to reduce its output and raise its price.22
Marshall recognized that the monopolist’s pricing could be tempered by a
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number of factors, not the least of which is that the monopolist might be dutybound to be concerned about the welfare of consumers.23 However, it might
also be concerned with how its pricing decision could affect the entry of competitors, which led him to suggest an early, albeit brief, form of the more contemporary theory of “limit pricing,” that is, “of a monopoly limited by the consideration that a very high price would bring rival producers into the ‹eld”
(1890, bk. 4, chap. 11, ¶ 16)—a theory of monopoly pricing brought back into
vogue among economists in the 1940s and 1950s by Joe Bain (1949, 1956) and
Franco Modigliani (1958) in the form of “entry forestalling prices.”24 However, Marshall also suggested that the monopolist might temper its current
price demands in order to develop its market and the future demand for its
product that would, at that time, allow the monopolist to charge a higher price.
But, in fact, even if he [the monopolist] does not concern himself with the
interests of the consumers, he is likely to re›ect that the demand for a thing
depends in a great measure on people’s familiarity with it; and that if he can
increase his sales by taking a price a little below that which would afford
him the maximum net revenue, the increased use of his commodity will
before long recoup him for his present loss. The lower the price of gas, the
more likely people are to have it laid on to their houses; and when once it
is there, they are likely to go on making some use of it, even though a rival,
such as electricity or mineral oil, may be competing closely with it. The
case is stronger when a railway company has a practical monopoly of the
transport of persons and goods to a sea-port, or to a suburban district
which is as yet but partly built over; the railway company may then ‹nd it
worth while, as a matter of business, to levy charges much below those
which would afford the maximum net revenue, in order to get merchants
into the habit of using the port, to encourage the inhabitants of the port to
develop their docks and warehouses; or to assist speculative builders in the
new suburb to build houses cheaply and to ‹ll them quickly with tenants,
thus giving to the suburb an air of early prosperity which goes far towards
insuring its permanent success. This sacri‹ce by a monopolist of part of his
present gains in order to develop future business differs in extent rather
than kind from the sacri‹ces which a young ‹rm commonly makes in order
to establish a connection. (1890, bk. 5, chap. 14, ¶ 20)
In making these observations about the interconnectedness of demand over
time, Marshall was anticipating more involved theories that came nearly a century later and will be considered in following chapters in this volume: the theories of experience goods (Nelson 1970), rational addition (Becker and Murphy 1988), lagged demand (Lee and Kreutzer 1982), and network effects
(Arthur 1996). However, Marshall obviously failed to consider in his textbook
that consumers might anticipate how current pricing could affect the future
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monopoly power of the ‹rm achieved from lowering its current prices and,
therefore, how consumers’ current purchases might be tempered without some
assurance by the ‹rm that it would not act like a monopolist in the future.
Modern re‹nements on monopoly theory in the form of imperfectly competitive or monopolistically competitive market structures developed by
Edward Chamberlin (1933) and Joan Robinson (1933) have not given rise to a
fundamentally different treatment of the way ‹rms facing a downward sloping
demand can curb production and give rise to a misallocation of resources. The
difference in the distortion is a matter of degree, not of kind. The principal difference is that imperfect monopolies cannot count on earning monopoly rents
in the long run. Still, such ‹rms have excess capacities. The issue of whether
the product variations spawned under imperfect monopoly market structures
compensate, or more than compensate, for the supposed resource misallocation is left as a question that economists cannot answer, and should not pretend
that they can (or so conventional, contemporary economic thinking holds).
schumpeter on the vital role of
the “monopoloid specie”
When Joseph Schumpeter said that any economic system that is fully ef‹cient
at every point in time will likely be inferior to a system that is ef‹cient at no
point in time, he was dramatically parting ways with what had, through time,
developed into the conventional view of monopoly, or what he tagged as the
“monopoloid species”25 (1942, 106): Any level of monopoly (or any market
structure “less perfect” than perfect competition) should be the object of economists’ scorn (with the degree of scorn related to a ‹rm’s “monopoly power,”
or ability to hike prices above marginal cost). In Schumpeter’s view, “monopoly had become the father of almost all [market and societal] abuses—in fact it
became his [the economist’s] pet bogey” and had become “almost synonymous
with any large-scale business” (1942, 100). He noted that Adam Smith had
“frowned” on monopolies with “awful dignity” (1942, 100). By using perfect
competition as the standard of market ef‹ciency, or cost-based competitive
pricing, Schumpeter argued that “literally anyone is a monopolist that sells
anything not in every respect, and wrapping and location and service included,
exactly like what other people sell; every grocer, or every haberdasher, or every
seller of ‘Good Humor’ on a road that is not simply lined with sellers of the
same brand of ice cream” (1942, 99). To him, “pure competition” was no less
than a “hallowed ideal,” and its use by economists to divine policy positions
(especially relating to antitrust policy) was “futile” (1949, 358). Because of virtually all economists’ myopic focus on perfect competition, Schumpeter con-
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cluded that an economist could be “a very good theorist and yet talk absolute
nonsense whenever confronted with the task of diagnosing a concrete historical pattern as a whole” (1942, 83, fn. 3). Edward Mason reports that Schumpeter once con‹ded that “he [Schumpeter] was anxious to clear existing work
out of the way in order to undertake a study of the question whether anything
could be said about the ‘monopoly problem’ that was anything other than
‘sheer ideology’” (Mason 1951, 141), a study on which, by the time of Schumpeter’s death, he had already drawn strong conclusions.26
Schumpeter reasoned that economists’ static models of markets—whether
competitive or monopoly—were directed narrowly toward explaining how
‹rms in markets “administer” existing known and available resources,
“whereas the relevant problem is how it [capitalism] creates and destroys
them” (1942, 84). In his “creative destruction” process of long-term economic
improvement, price competition or its absence, the focus of standard competitive and monopoly models, is not inconsequential, but price competition obviously pales in comparison with the importance of actual competition, or the
threat of competition, from innovations, which can cover new products, new
technologies, and new types of organizational structures. Competition from
these sources strikes “not at the margins of the pro‹ts and the output of the
existing ‹rms but at their [the ‹rms’] foundations and their very lives” (1942,
84).27 According to Schumpeter, without including an analysis of this type of
nonprice competition, any discussion of markets, even though technically correct, is as empty as a performance of “Hamlet without the Danish prince”
(1942, 86).
Schumpeter’s “perennial gale of creative destruction” can easily, although
mistakenly, be viewed solely as a positive commentary on the role of ‹rms in
highly competitive market environments, not monopoly, under capitalism.
Schumpeter, however, saw the market process in more complex and complete
terms, which ultimately made monopoly a strategically important force for
social good in any dynamic, or would-be dynamic, economy. Firms that are
able to charge above-competitive prices might indeed earn, for a time, monopoly pro‹ts.28 However, if ‹rms could not hope to earn more than “normal
pro‹ts” (or the minimal return capital must have to stay in place), they might
not emerge with the same frequency that they do, because they would have
drastically impaired incentives to innovate (1942, 102).29 Besides, monopolies
“largely create what they exploit. Hence, the usual conclusion about their
in›uence on long-run output [that overall economic growth should be choked]
would be invalid even if they were genuine monopolies in the technical sense
of the term” (1942, 101).30
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Moreover, the monopoly pro‹ts “might still prove to be the easiest and
most effective way of collecting the means by which to ‹nance additional
investment [i.e., expansion]” (1942, 87), a line of argument that underlies the
granting of monopoly privileges through copyrights and patents.31 Surely,
Schumpeter also understood (as did Smith) that the prospects of monopoly
pro‹ts would make the ‹nancing of initial forays into markets all the easier and
cheaper. Just as surely, he understood that the probability of monopoly pro‹ts
over a range of entrepreneurial ventures—whether taken up in a single ‹rm or
across an array of entrepreneurial investments—could encourage the development of investment portfolios, which can reduce investment risks and, thereby,
encourage investments and innovations.
In an important way, Schumpeter appears to be arguing that the instances
of monopoly, or market power, in a broader economy are an unheralded force
behind Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.” Monopolies actually energize “creative
destruction.” In seeking to create monopolies and earn above-competitive
pro‹ts, new ‹rms are forever destroying existing monopolies. In the process,
these new entrants may, by accident or direct intention, be giving rise to new
and improved products, technologies, and organizational forms, or over time
the economy is able to grow faster because at each point in time, monopolies
are holding it back. Put another way, monopolies are a “necessary evil” (1942,
106).32 In drawing what many might see as a paradoxical conclusion, Schumpeter suggests, “There is no more paradox in this [case for monopolies] than
there is in saying that motorcars are traveling faster than they otherwise would
because they are provided with brakes” (88; emphasis in the original).
But then, Schumpeter could rest comfortably in what he believed to be the
reality of market life: Monopolies were short-lived practically everywhere—at
least when unprotected by governments, precisely because of the “gale of creative destruction”: “The power to exploit at pleasure a given pattern of demand
. . . can under the condition of intact capitalism hardly persist for a period long
enough to matter for the analysis of total output, unless buttressed by public
authority” (1942, 99). In contrast to Smith and others, Schumpeter doubts that
even ‹rms protected by signi‹cant entry restrictions can long endure if they do
what monopolies are supposed to do, restrict their outputs to raise their prices
(99).33
Schumpeter concludes, “Perfectly free entry into a new ‹eld may make it
impossible to enter it at all. The introduction of new methods of production
and new commodities is hardly conceivable with perfect—and perfectly
prompt—competition from the start. And this means that the bulk of what we
call economic progress is incompatible with it” (1942, 104–5; emphasis in the
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original). That is to say, economic progress is compatible only with the
existence of monopoly pro‹ts of some (unstated) degree. It follows that entry
barriers have social value, at least up to a point.
Why, then, is there so much talk about the “evils” of monopoly? Schumpeter suggested that it is largely unrecognized demagoguery at work: “Economists, government agents, journalists, and politicians in this country obviously
love the word because it has come to be a term of opprobrium which is sure to
rouse the public hostility against any interest so labeled” (1942, 100). At the
same time, he clearly believed that monopolies’ ease of movement among markets and of arising in new markets, and thereby destroying others, would
inevitably cause large ‹rms with market power to be frequently subjected to
“vindictive harassment” by antitrust authorities (Mason 1951, 144).34
But then, Schumpeter was not the ‹rst to focus on the destructive side of
markets or the integral role monopolies play in that process, a point most
recently stressed by Michael Perelman (1995). David Wells (1828–89)—a
chemist by training but acclaimed as one of the more important economists of
the last quarter of the nineteenth century (Ferleger 1977), in spite of working
for the federal government as Special Commissioner of Revenue—saw competition pushing capitalism to the brink of self-destruction. The source of the
self-destructive competition was rapid technological advances, spawned principally by “great industrial enterprises,” pushing the economy relentlessly
toward excess capacity, overproduction, and de›ation (and the country’s price
index did fall by nearly half during the last third of the century). Wells saw an
integral connection between progress and the destruction of wealth, which he
characterized as an “economic law,” which has all the markings of Schumpeter’s “perennial gale”: “All material progress is affected through the destruction of capital by invention and discovery, and the rapidity of such destruction
is the best indicator of the rapidity of progress” (1889, 146).35
For Schumpeter, monopolies were collectors of investment funds, which
made them a wellspring of new innovations that ultimately fuel the creative
destruction process, a part of which was the dethroning of existing monopolies by new ones. Wells also saw monopolies as a wellspring of inventions and
discoveries. However, he also saw in them another source of social value, the
only potential check on overproduction: “There appears to be no other means
of avoiding such results than that the great producers come to an understanding as to the prices they will ask; which, in turn naturally implies agreements
to the extent to which they will produce” (Wells 1889, 74), an advantage of
monopoly that Schumpeter speci‹cally rejected (1942, 106). Like Schumpeter, Wells worried that antitrust laws would have the opposite effect of the
one intended. In Wells’s case, he feared that antitrust enforcement would
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“The Wretched Spirit of Monopoly”
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ensure the continuation of self-destructiveness (through overproduction) of
supracompetitive markets (unless they were used to thwart trusts, such as
Standard Oil, that have used their ability to raise capital to drive up output and
drive down prices).36 Schumpeter, on the other hand, emphasized how the
indiscriminate pursuit of trust busting would undermine the innovative vitality of the economy (1942, 91).
the schumpeter hypothesis
If Schumpeter had left his assessment of the relative merits of competitive and
monopoly markets totally conceptual, without concrete direction on the
nature of the testable facts, he would have certainly retained his honored status
within the annals of economic thought. However, just as surely, the generations of economists and policymakers who followed him would not have seen
Schumpeter’s thinking subjected to as much following econometric work, nor
cited as frequently. Over the past sixty-some years, econometricians have created a nonconsequential competitive industry of their own as they have sought
to test the so-called Schumpeter hypothesis, which was best stated by Schumpeter in this way: “As soon as we go into the details and inquire into the individual items in which progress has been most conspicuous, the trail leads not
to the doors of those ‹rms that work under conditions of comparatively free
competition but precisely to the doors of the large concerns” (1942, 82).
The Schumpeter hypothesis has, of course, been reformulated by a series
of economists for their own research needs.37 Econometricians have also produced a sizable number of studies that have attempted to draw statistically validated connections between various measures of, on the one hand, ‹rm size,
industry concentration, market power, or retained business earnings and, on
the other hand, various input measures of innovativeness of ‹rms (e.g., their
R&D expenditures) and output measures of their inventiveness (e.g., patents
awarded ‹rms). The statistical deductions drawn have been, unfortunately, all
over the econometric map, with some studies showing a growth in R&D
expenditures or patents awarded with growth in ‹rm size, and other studies
showing the opposite (Baumol 1990; Scherer 1965; Hamberg 1964; Horriwitz
1962; Jennings 1989; Jennings and Lumpkin 1995).38 Then, more studies have
shown an initial increase in input and output measures of the innovativeness
and inventiveness of ‹rms with growth in size, only to be followed by a
decline.39
Of course, the researchers have also found that the relationship between
‹rm size and measures of innovativeness and inventiveness differs by industry
(Worley 1961; Schmookler 1959; Mans‹eld 1963, 1964).40 However, econo-
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mists who have reviewed this literature have found the Schumpeter hypothesis
wanting at best. Moreover, Scherer (1970, 377) deduced from all the work
done through the late 1960s that “new entrants contribute a disproportionately
high share of all really revolutionary new industrial products and processes,”
although he had earlier cautioned that “perhaps a bevy of fact-mechanics can
still rescue the Schumpeterian engine from disgrace” (1965, 1122). In their
extensive review of the studies on the Schumpeter hypothesis through the early
1970s, Kamien and Schwartz concluded that “the evidence indicates that
research output intensity does tend to increase and then decrease with increasing ‹rm size” (1975, 3).41
Link (1980) could have been one such “fact-mechanic,” given that he has
argued that the rate of return on ‹rms’ R&D expenditures is a far better test of
the Schumpeter hypothesis than, say, R&D expenditures and patents awarded.
After all, the payoff from innovative activity is of greater interest to owners
than the absolute real level of their expenditures or the count of patents (whose
worth can vary greatly). In his study of ‹rms in the chemical and allied products industry using 1975 data, Link found substantial economies of scale on
R&D expenditures, as measured by their rate of returns. Small ‹rms (those
with less than $300 million in sales) had a rate of return on their collective
R&D expenditures of 30 percent. Large ‹rms had a rate of return of 78 percent, which should imply greater innovative activity among larger ‹rms—at
least in the chemical industry (and Link chose the chemical industry to study
because the industry’s R&D expenditures were affected only to a limited extent
by government funding).42
A number of empirical problems arise in testing the Schumpeter hypothesis. For example, we can’t be con‹dent that measured variables—for example,
‹rm size measured by sales or industry concentration ratios—are reasonable
surrogates for the kind of market power Schumpeter had in mind. Moreover,
R&D expenditures are hardly the only use to which large ‹rms can put their
(monopoly) pro‹ts (Markham 1965; Fisher and Temin 1965; Cohen and Levin
1989). After all, Schumpeter stressed that innovation could come in the form
of changes in ‹rm organization or, for that matter, advertising campaigns. In
addition, it is not altogether clear whether the R&D expenditures were the
result or cause of ‹rm size and market dominance. Indeed, as Nelson and Winter (1982) have argued, the market structure is endogenous to Schumpeterian
competition, suggesting that R&D expenditures and ‹rm size emerge
together.
Finally, the full impact of large ‹rms, or ‹rms with measures of monopoly
power, may be more indirect than researchers have imagined. With technol-
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ogy in product and process development progressing along so many avenues,
the top 100 or 500 largest ‹rms in an industry, or even the entire economy,
which are the focus of a number of econometric studies, can hardly be expected
to investigate all avenues of innovation. They must pick and choose their innovation avenues (and their risks), often with an eye to how their R&D work will
complement their existing product line, leaving much for outsiders to do that
breaks with existing product lines.43 Top ‹rms’ own bureaucracies can hold
them back on the range and depth of their entrepreneurial activities. They can,
however, set themselves up as cherry pickers, that is, they can wait and see what
products emerge from much smaller and newer ‹rms and show signs of
becoming successful. They can then step in and buy up the successful smaller
‹rms, with the larger ‹rms using their well-established distribution systems to
make the newly developed products and processes more successful than they
otherwise would be. The existence of the large ‹rms, along with their willingness and ability to pay supracompetitive prices (because of their market power)
for demonstrated successful innovations, can inspire much entrepreneurial
activity among smaller ‹rms—and, hence, can be viewed as an important force
for innovation among small ‹rms and new entrants.
Having said all of this, it is important to note that Schumpeter was careful
to stress that any assessments of the impact of the monopoly power of large
‹rms could be properly made only over a long stretch of time, covering
decades, at the very least, and perhaps a century or more. Even then, he was
careful to add addenda to his so-called hypothesis: (1) that “mere size is neither
necessary nor suf‹cient for the superiority of the monopoly ‹rm” (1942, 101)
and (2) that the critical dependent variable would be some variant of the overall “standard of living,” not some narrowly conceived measure of ‹rm size or
industry concentration.44
Researchers have done their studies, apparently assuming that Schumpeter
was ‹xated exclusively on ‹rm size. Although he often wrote about large ‹rms
in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, his principal concern throughout his
major book-length works was really the “character and quality” of entrepreneurship and leadership within ‹rms, large or small, as McNulty (1974) has
argued in some detail.45 Indeed, as Chamberlin (1951) argued early in the
debate, Schumpeter practically dismissed altogether economies of scale per se
as a source of ‹rm size (and therefore didn’t give much credence to the theory
of monopolistic competition). If there was any initial fall in long-run average
cost, the source was the lumpiness of plant and equipment, not any technical
advantage that ‹rms achieve from expanding all factors of production. In
Schumpeter’s world, ‹rms might appear to face decreasing long-run cost func-
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in defense of monopoly
tions, which might appear to be the source of their size, but appearances can be
deceiving. The ongoing pace of innovation in production processes, which
lower ‹rms’ cost curves, is a key cause of lower costs with expanded size.46
concluding comments
Obviously, the word monopoly has been used in a variety of contexts throughout the history of economic thought. The term has been used to describe (if
not denigrate) the inherent privileges of property owners, given that no one
else has access to the owners’ rights without dealing with the owner. Monopoly
has been used to characterize large business ‹rms (without regard to their market shares), as well as ‹rms that are the dominant, if not the only, producers in
their markets. A key unifying feature of ‹rms tagged as monopolies has been
the ‹rms’ ability to signi‹cantly affect total market supply of their products,
enough at least for them to have some choice over their selling prices. This
choice gives them the capacity to seek maximum pro‹ts, within the constraints
of their cost and demand schedules. Of course, monopoly and cartel have been
used synonymously, because a cartel can supposedly do, once it has been organized, what a single (or dominant) producer can do with almost the same facility (which, as we will argue later, is not likely to be the case).
However, monopoly has also been used to describe ‹rms that have been able
to raise their prices, as well as production levels, because of imposed governmental restrictions on competition, for example, through copyrights, patents,
tariffs, and quotas, or, for that matter, trade secrets, trademarks, and brands.
Such ‹rms are said to be monopolies because with the market protections, they
all can sell their goods above cost.
In the views of the economic masters covered in this chapter, except for
Schumpeter (and, to a lesser extent, Wells), one feature stands out: No matter
how the term has been used, monopoly has been viewed at best as a “necessary
evil,” as in the cases of land property rights, and at worst in other cases (with
few exceptions, such as in Smith’s argument that monopoly might be a useful
device for encouraging especially hazardous market ventures) as a drag on
consumer welfare, disposable income, and economic progress. At the same
time, all writers covered appear to be uni‹ed on an important point: Absent
government support, monopolies that endure for long are likely to be rare,
which implies that any damage done is not likely to persist, mainly because in
raising their prices above costs, monopolists inspire competitors to enter their
markets.
Schumpeter clearly agrees that monopolies that spring solely from market
strategies, unsupported by government protection, are likely to be relatively
In Defense of Monopoly: How Market Power Fosters Creative Production
Richard B. McKenzie and Dwight R. Lee
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=93419
The University of Michigan Press
“The Wretched Spirit of Monopoly”
23
short-lived. Indeed, he suggests that the only market structure likely to be
rarer than perfect competition in the world outside economists’ classrooms is a
‹rm that persistently behaves like a monopoly, that is, restricts its sales to push
up its prices, and then survives.47 That claim allows Schumpeter to stress the
largely unheralded role of monopolies in fueling the “capitalist achievement,”
not so much price competition, in which consumer values remain constant, but
rather in promoting nonprice competition, in which the value of available
goods is constantly being upgraded, but with price competition ever-present,
albeit derivative factors that make innovations accessible to the masses.48 So
what if the monopolist doesn’t produce with the ef‹ciency of a perfectly competitive market? That idealized standard is unachievable. Moreover, even if it
were achievable, any harm done by any monopoly’s restriction on output must
be juxtaposed with the gains from product and production process improvements. Otherwise, reconciling the growth in human welfare in the latter part
of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century (if not
beyond), a time when many companies were expanding rapidly and gaining
control over price, is dif‹cult, as Schumpeter stressed.49
Although much is to be gained from using perfect competition for evaluating price competition and from standard monopoly models, which help illustrate the standard negative assessment of monopoly that extends back to Smith
and forward to the prevailing sentiment among modern textbook writers, it is
the Schumpeterian view of monopoly that drives the development of this book
and, to the extent adopted, forces a change in the perception of policies related
to monopoly.50 Under the Smithian view of monopoly, all trade restrictions,
regulations, and private efforts to monopolize markets have a single policy
solution: Get rid of them.51
From the Schumpeterian perspective, however, the solution is not so easy.
Hidden in Schumpeter’s analysis is a theory of optimum monopoly required for
maximum economic growth.52 Such a theory necessarily implies that a “delicate” (Schumpeter’s word) balance be struck not only in matters of antitrust
enforcement but also in all other government policies relating to market
restrictions and regulation, whether they spring from private or public
sources.53
We take up in this book a largely Schumpeterian view of monopoly—perhaps more accurately dubbed and widely known as Schumpeterian competition—in part because his view has been lost on many economists and policymakers, especially in the antitrust area, as seen in monopoly presentations in
modern textbooks that we lay out in the following chapter. We also take up the
Schumpeterian perspective because Schumpeter was, in our view, actually
overly conservative in his criticisms of monopoly theory as it existed in his day,
In Defense of Monopoly: How Market Power Fosters Creative Production
Richard B. McKenzie and Dwight R. Lee
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=93419
The University of Michigan Press
24
in defense of monopoly
and as that theory has been brought forward with updates and extensions. A
critique of modern monopoly theory should include a reexamination of the
impact of the emergence of monopoly on the net inef‹ciency—and extent of
failure—in markets. This reexamination acknowledges that price changes, up
or down, affect the marginal value of the last unit buyers consume, but reexamination directly challenges the conventional microeconomic claim that
price changes have no effect on the schedule of consumers’ marginal values of
various units, a claim that necessarily implies that price changes do not affect
market demand.54 The adjustments we propose in basic monopoly theory have
been all the more relevant because of the emergence of many modern goods,
the value of which is founded on such considerations as networks, experience,
and trust.
Moreover, there has been a long-term decline in the marginal cost of production in many industries relative to total cost. Today, a growing number of
goods can be reproduced at zero or close to zero marginal cost (as in the case
of electronic goods: e-books, e-music, e-movies, and so on). These cost factors
force a reconsideration of the social value of monopolies and their protective
entry barriers, as we will argue at practically every step in this book. This
means that our critique of monopoly theory stands on, but then moves beyond,
Schumpeter’s key insights.